Canterbury Cathedral's choir at the closing service of 2022's Lambeth Conference. The Lambeth team describes the calls as a process of call and response in the pattern of liturgical singing. Photo: Ian Walton for The Lambeth Conference
A team of organizers from the Lambeth Conference has announced phase three of the Lambeth calls, invitations to action and discussion on the Anglican Communion’s principals and mission issued at last summer’s conference. In this phase, Anglicans around the world are invited to discuss the calls, apply them to their local contexts and “bring the calls to life.”
The full text of the calls, published on Pentecost and updated to reflect the feedback from the groups that originally drafted them and the bishops at the conference, is available on the Lambeth Conference website.
In the first two phases, the calls were drafted by select teams of bishops, then discussed by bishops at the conference. Now the organizers say they hope the clergy and laity of the rest of the Communion will “add their voices” to the calls in theming built around a musical metaphor of liturgical song. In a responsive reading, clergy lead the call and the congregation add their voices in response. Likewise, the organizers encourage Anglicans to consider the calls and respond by sharing them in their home communities and applying them in ways that make sense.
“This call and response embraces a sense of a journey; it is expected to evolve; it rarely stands still,” a statement on the Lambeth Conference website reads. “In music, a player offers a short melody or call, which another player hears, interprets and responds. The result is a sense of movement and development, as the music builds.”
The Lambeth calls deal with subjects ranging from Christian discipleship to environment and sustainable development to human dignity and global reconciliation. The Lambeth team is holding a series of webinars through its website beginning in late May, which Anglicans can join to hear more about the calls and their application. It is inviting Anglicans to meet in groups to discuss the calls in the weeks following each webinar, with webinars and discussions planned to run to late 2025.